Transparency in Wisconsin's School Districts. What's YOUR District's Rating?

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Our West Bend School District received a "D" for lack of transparency with information concerning:

• TAXES
• MEETINGS
• CONTRACT
• AUDITS
• PUBLIC RECORDS (ouch!)
• BACKGROUND CHECKS (double ouch!)

Unfortunately, this is the norm across the board. (Only four districts receiving anything higher than a D.) If our kid came home with a report card that had D's in every subject, justified it by saying it's what everyone else got, that wouldn't sit well, would it?  Same goes for this report card. We can do better.  We should do better.
What did YOUR school district get?  Click HERE to find out!

Fashion Rage for Concealed Carry

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New clothing line offered for surge in Americans who want to conceal carry.  Nice!

Woolrich, a 182-year-old clothing company, describes its new chino pants as an elegant and sturdy fashion statement, with a clean profile and fabric that provides comfort and flexibility. 

And they are great for hiding a handgun.

The company has added a second pocket behind the traditional front pocket for a weapon. Or, for those who prefer to pack their gun in a holster, it can be tucked inside the stretchable waistband. The back pockets are also designed to help hide accessories, like a knife and a flashlight.

Check it out HERE.

Republicans MUST vote in May 8th Primary - What mainstream media is not telling you

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Conservatives/Republicans need to get out and vote on May 8. While the focus has been on the Democratic candidates running in the primary, what you are not hearing is that there is ONE REPUBLICAN candidate running against Scott Walker as well. 


Republicans NEED to get out and cast a vote that day. Mainstream media has kept this on the down-low. This is vital information that is detrimental to the race for governor. 


Only one candidate will make the ballot: SCOTT WALKER or ARTHUR KOHL-RIGGS. 


Pass this information far and wide.


CONSERVATIVES/REPUBLICANS:  VOTE ON MAY 8 FOR SCOTT WALKER

Compas Spoofs Fitz. Disses Homemakers and WOMEN

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In this SPOOF done to rebut a comment made by Sen. Fitzgerald by his opponent for the 13th District, Lori Compas (whose claim to fame is getting names on recall petitions and delivering boxes to the Capital), the "average housewife" is given the appearance of a brainless idiot.  Of course, to be sure we understand a housewife's role, Compas herself appears in the starring role wearing pearls, an apron, a dress, and carries a duster.  To Compas, it seems, that's the iconic look of the stay-at-home woman.  She couldn't appear to have been hard at work on something like, oh, the family taxes, or the household budget, or wiping a kids' puke off the floor, or taxi'ing children to events, strategizing future family investments, or the like.  I suppose this was Compas's idea of passing off humor; However, this is an epic FAIL with regard to the message she is sending to women who work at home.  I am not talking about women who have jobs outside of the home that they are able to perform within their home setting, I'm speaking of women who work full-time right within their own domains, children or no children.  Compas's appearance in the skit of a housewife-bimbo tells us that she clearly believes the only way she could get her message across to Fitzgerald was by slashing and burning one of her own kind - a WOMAN.

While using her two children (wearing T-shirts labeled "union thug" and "protest junkie") to aid in sending a sad message of disdain toward another human being while disrespecting housewives everywhere (shame), Compas implies that she did not need her husband in order to initiate and run a recall.

Let's test that message out...

HERE you can witness her husband, Eric (an Asst. Prof. at UW-Whitewater) helping out his wife with "analyzing the distribution of signers [recall signatures]."  He generously "tweets" this information out as well HERE.

HERE is Eric's map of campaign contributions for Scott Fitzgerald, and, interestingly, HERE is Lori's statement that coincides with the findings on his map.  Hmmmm......

Eric signed his wife's recall petition HERE.

Lastly, Compas clearly needed her husband (and even her children) to pull off an offensive campaign slur in a youtube video skit.  Guess she's really NOT in this alone after all, is she?

Wonder Woman, she ain't.

Now, let's put Fitzgerald's comments BACK INTO CONTEXT.  (Compas's disingenuous attempt at twisting Fitzgerald's words is so poorly orchestrated, it's more transparent than cellophane tape.)

What Fitzgerald actually said:

For the record, Fitzgerald said he doesn't buy Compas' Pollyanna image. He knows some people are painting the race as a David-vs.-Goliath contest. But Fitzgerald said he thinks her husband is one of the main forces behind her campaign, as well as unions and protest groups.
"I don't for one minute believe she is the organizing force behind this whole thing," he said.

What the average voter can easily understand from this:  She is backed by others such as unions, special interest groups (she is endorsed by Planned Parenthood and FAIR Wisconsin -a pro gay group), and her husband, Eric, a teacher, who organized a protest walk from UW-Whitewater to the Capitol to hand-deliver a message from the UW-W teachers opposing the Budget Repair Bill. (As an aside, both of Compas's parents are retired schoolteachers.)Fitzgerald's comments are legit.  Her husband clearly has a stake in his wife's endeavors.  To say he is not a driving force is to deny the obvious.  Compas gets a thumbs down for items too numerous to mention.  Last, Compas clearly needs to be held up by "somebody."  If you go to her "listening sessions" HERE and HERE, you will find Compas stating that she knows little of the issues concerning her district or the state, and that she is there to "listen."  She gives no indications of her position on anything, and for all one can gather from these sessions, she is pro-Cottonelle and anti-Charmin, which isn't telling you much.Compas should stick to photography.  At least it doesn't involve misleading the general population of her district.  And everyone smiles at you.

Recaller Taints West Bend Memorial Day Parade

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Our family attended the Memorial Day parade in West Bend.  We witnessed many, many servicemen, young and old, representing all branches of service.  We were humbled by their presence and honored to be the recipient of the freedom that comes with sacrifice.  Vintage cars, military vehicles, new 'vettes passed by.  Elected officials walked, waved and lent time to honor this day of remembrance.

And then there was the lone recaller......

An older man riding a three-wheeled bike.

He had a large sign across the back of his cycle that read "Recall Walker."

Shame.

A true spoiler to a solemn and honorable event.

Who let this happen?

Here are a few pics of those who served, along with a "thank you" to all military personnel, past and present.

The Causes of the Protests in Afghanistan

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Published on Sunday, February 26, 2012 by Salon

The Causes of the Protests in Afghanistan

by Glenn Greenwald Most American media accounts and commentary about the ongoing violent anti-American protests in Afghanistan depict their principal cause as anger over the burning of Korans (it’s just a book: why would people get violent over it?) — except that Afghans themselves keep saying things like this:

Afghan protesters shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration in Kunduz province February 25, 2012.Protesters in Kabul interviewed on the road and in front of Parliament said that this was not the first time that Americans had violated Afghan cultural and religious traditions and that an apology was not enough.
“This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead and killing our children,” said Maruf Hotak, 60, a man who joined the crowd on the outskirts of Kabul, referring to an episode in Helmand Province when American Marines urinated on the dead bodies of men they described as insurgents and to a recent erroneous airstrike on civilians in Kapisa Province that killed eight young Afghans.
“They always admit their mistakes,” he said. “They burn our Koran and then they apologize. You can’t just disrespect our holy book and kill our innocent children and make a small apology.”

And:

Members of Parliament called on Afghans to take up arms against the American military, and Western officials said they feared that conservative mullahs might incite more violence at the weekly Friday Prayer, when a large number of people worship at mosques.
“Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation,” said Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a member of Parliament from the Ghorband district in Parwan Province, where at least four demonstrators were killed in confrontations with the police on Wednesday.

The U.S. has violently occupied their country for more than a decade. It has, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal himself explained, killed what he called an “amazing number” of innocent Afghans in checkpoint shootings. It has repeatedly — as in, over and over — killed young Afghan children in air strikes. It continues to imprison their citizens for years at Bagram and other American bases without charges of any kind and with credible reports of torture and other serious abuses. Soldiers deliberately shot Afghan civilians for fun and urinated on their corpses and displayed them as trophies.
Read the full article at Salon...
© 2012 Salon Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His just-released book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.

Remotely Piloted War

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How Drone War Became The American Way of Life

By Tom Engelhardt   In the American mind, if Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press here. They have generally been greeted as if they were the sleekest of iPhones armed with missiles. When the first American drone assassins burst onto the global stage early in the last decade, they caught most of us by surprise, especially because they seemed to come out of nowhere or from some wild sci-fi novel. Ever since, they've been touted in the media as the shiniest presents under the American Christmas tree of war, the perfect weapons to solve our problems when it comes to evildoers lurking in the global badlands. And can you blame Americans for their love affair with the drone?  Who wouldn’t be wowed by the most technologically advanced, futuristic, no-pain-all-gain weapon around? Here’s the thing, though: put drones in a more familiar context, skip the awestruck commentary, and they should have been eerily familiar. If, for instance, they were car factories, they would seem so much less exotic to us. Think about it: What does a drone do? Like a modern car factory, it replaces a pilot, a skilled job that takes significant training, with robotics and a degraded version of the same job outsourced elsewhere. In this case, the “offshore” location that job headed for wasn’t China or Mexico, but a military base in the U.S., where a guy with a joystick, trained in a hurry and sitting at a computer monitor, is “piloting” that plane. And given our experience with the hemorrhaging of good jobs from the U.S., who will be surprised to discover that, in 2011, the U.S. Air Force was already training more drone “pilots” than actual fighter and bomber pilots combined? That’s one way drones are something other than the futuristic sci-fi wonders we imagine them to be. But there’s another way that drones have been heading for the American “homeland” for four decades, and it has next to nothing to do with technology, advanced or otherwise. In a sense, drone war might be thought of as the most natural form of war for the All Volunteer Military. To understand why that’s so, we need to head back to a crucial decision implemented just as the Vietnam war was ending. Disarming the Amateurs, Demobilizing the CitizenryIt’s true that, in the wake of grinding wars that have also been debacles -- the Afghan version of which has entered its 11th year -- the U.S. military is in ratty shape. Its equipment needs refurbishing and its troops are worn down. The stress of endlessly repeated tours of duty in war zones, brain injuries and other wounds caused by the roadside bombs that have often replaced a visible enemy on the “battlefield,” suicide rates that can’t be staunched, rising sexual violence within the military, increasing crime rates around military bases, and all the other strains and pains of unending war have taken their toll. Continue Reading.........